


The Battle For Dawn

by queenofroses12



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Action/Adventure, Conspiracy, Crew as Family, Epic Battles, Fix-It, Friendship, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Horror, Lovecraftian Monster(s), Multiple Crossovers, Shippy Gen, Some Humor, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 15:54:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29611797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofroses12/pseuds/queenofroses12
Summary: Eons ago - the race of Xeleth Nivar left the galaxy, ascending to a higher plane of existence.Mid 2260s - the Xeleth Nivar returned, to find the galaxy populated with thousands of sentient species. Species they judged unworthy to share their world.2360s - After nearly a century of careful planning, the Xeleth Nivar deploys puppeteer parasites to take over Starfleet command. The infiltration is unmasked by Captain Picard, but not before it has left the Federation in chaos, starting a domino effect that weakened the Federation, leading to the disasters  Cardassian, Borg and Dominion wars turned into.Early 2400s - Picard, now in his synth body, contemplates how far  Federation has fallen from it's high ideals, and dreads it's inevitable and imminent collapse. Q appears, offering him a second chance to end the downward spiral before it really began.Mid 2260s - The three Enterprises, the Voyager, and the Deep Space Nine station, along with their crews, are pulled through time and space by the Q continuum to stop the Xeleth Nivar. The foremost heroes of the Fleet find themselves pitted against a threat that could destroy the very Reality.Fix Fic for the dark world of Star Trek : Picard.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 10





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> * The beginning is set at the end of Picard Season One. Q turns up in Picard's cabin aboard his new ship.
> 
> * Frankly, watched Star Trek: Picard, couldn't bear how dark it was, and needed to correct the canon. Do let me know what you guys think about this. Comments and concrit welcome and appreciated.

Picard wasn’t sure just what he was supposed to feel.

Joy? Was that the right reaction? After all, they had won, hadn’t they? The synth ban revoked, possible reconciliation with Romulans in the not-so-distant future, his terminal illness no longer a real issue – hell, mortality no longer a real issue.

Soji would have her chance at a real life, at a life that would involve more than just staying one step ahead of hunters, of fighting for her life. He was once more where he had always been meant to be, on the bridge of a starship, heading into the unknown.

Then why did he feel so empty? So hopeless?

It was partly the reaction of being in a synth body, he supposed. He had been warned it would take some getting used to. But it was more than that. Much more. He had fought against admitting the truth, even to himself.

All his life, he had spent in the service of the Federation. The Federation which he had believed in, that he had been willing to die for. Something far greater than himself. An ideal. Something that stood for the endless curiosity, the endless resilience, of life anywhere in the universe – or multiverse, for that matter.

It stood for hope – a faith in the essential goodness in the heart of all sapient life. Unity. Standing together, standing by each other, watching out for each other. A hand that would always reach out when one stumbled.

Yes, he was a believer in ideals. And for a very long time, he had believed the Federation embodied those ideals.

Oh, he was not naïve. He had seen enough to know that there were those in the Federation who certainly did not live upto those ideals, but he had believed with all his heart and soul, that they were the exception, not the rule.

That identity – that certainty of being on the side of the angels, so to speak – had given him strength to endure far more than would have broken another man. He had always been sure in his faith – not faith in any God, but faith in the essential nature of all sapient life, in their ability to do the right thing, make the right call, when the time came.

He no longer had that certainty.

He had lost it when the order had been given to recall the rescue fleet. When the Romulans, whom the Vulcans – especially Ambassador Spock – had tried so long, sacrificed so much, to bring into the fold had been left to perish. Especially as he remembered what, centuries ago, had been the decision of the Fleet command when faced with another former enemy’s peril. And the Romulans, their allies in the Dominion War, had had greater claim to a helping hand than the Klingons had, in those faraway, brighter days.

“That was a different world” he sighed softly.

The cabin, spacious as it was, seemed claustrophobic, stifling. But he didn’t want to go outside, not now, not yet. He couldn’t face the optimism of his people – people who had been through hell, and now wanted to believe they had come out on the other side.

He couldn’t be so sure. He knew too much to feel so sure.

The Federation was crumbling. Or rather, the Federation he had believed in, the Federation as it once had been, was crumbling. The Borg war, followed so swiftly by the Dominion wars, had leached away a great deal of what was bright and right in the Federation.

Too many deaths. Too much blood shed. Too many youth with blood on their hands. Too many who had seen the face of war far too young. “They won” he said softly to himself.

“They won, in a way. They struck at our heart. And we chose to change. Cast away all that made us…us.”

He managed a wry smile. Pathetic, really. Surely he was exaggerating… No. he couldn’t afford false comfort. The Federation was in danger. Too great a danger, since it came from within. He knew full well the discussions regarding secession…

The rest of his crew believed they had won the war, and he hadnot had the heart to disillusion them. they would find out soon enough, any way. The Federation was dying. He wanted to tell himself that they could still fight it, that they could still win. That enough minds and hearts still believed. He could tell himself all that.

But it would be a lie. Perhaps the end wouldn’t come in their lifetimes. Perhaps. But soon…

“Jean-Luc!”

For a second he thought (almost hoped) he was hallucinating – that particular voice with its manic cheerfulness was unmistakable… But here? Now?

“Long time, no see! You never call, you never write… Now, Jean-Luc, is this any way to greet a friend?”

He simply did not have the energy to deal with Q right now. Picard turned away. Maybe Q would get bored and take off again to torment some other world, some other timeline.

“Jean-Luc!”

He sighed.

“Just leave me alone, Q.” 

Q tilted his head to one side, putting on what he no doubt imagined to be an adorably puzzled expression.

“Oh, Jean… You just aren’t any fun today.”

He didn’t bother to reply.

“Jean Luc!”

“Q. I am not in the mood for fun, okay?”

Q was trouble. He knew that. Annoying him meant even more trouble. But right now, he couldn’t bring himself to care, either way. Let the maniac do what he will.

“But I’m not here to have fun!”

He threw himself onto his bed, hoping the current omnipotent nuisance could take a cue. No pun intended. Q responded by flinging himself onto the bed right beside Picard. Uh, not the intended cue…

“Q..”

“I’m serious!”

“Alright. What do you want, then?”

Q grinned. He had clearly been waiting for this question.

“Why, give you a second chance, of course!”

Picard grimaced.

“No offense, Q, but the last time you gave me a second chance…didn’t go so well.”

Q waggled his eyebrows.

“Oh, Jean-Luc! I was just playing then, this is serious! Plus, this time it’s not just me, it’s the Continuum!”

That got his attention. Q himself was one thing, the entire Q collective quite another. Q grinned.

“Yeah, it’s the continuum! That’s why I got no time to play, they’re such spoilsports, you know! All business, they say, no detours, no pranks, even though they know how very careful I am and-“

“What second chance?”

“Oh, technically, it isn’t exactly a second chance for you – you take it, you’re likely gonna get yourself killed in a day or two out there. It’s a second chance for…sorta everyone. For the Federation, anyway.”

“I don’t see what you are-“

“You know what you been thinking when I turned up. The Federation.”

“W e can fix ourselves.”

“Sure about it?”

“In any case, your help is unlikely to improve matters much, given your, uh, track record.”

Q looked genuinely hurt.

“Jean Luc! And here I thought I was your friend!”

“I lost a lot of friends, Q. some of them very recently. So, if you have a point, get to it.”

It was unwise to antagonize Q. he knew that, but just couldn’t seem to care.

“Point? You needn’t lose them at all. Data. Rikers’ kid. None of them has to die. None of them.”

Picard stared. Q’s manic manner had eased a little. He was almost…earnest.

“You can fix this before it really began, Jean-Luc.”

“You’re…proposing time travel.”

Q nodded energetically.

“Yeah, that’s it! I was beginning to worry you’d gone senile, Jean-Luc. You usually ain’t this slow.”

Picard couldn’t help the sudden flare of hope, but stifled it. he had seen too many of Q’s plans.

“Do you really think this..this mess…came about due to one cause? One single cause we can travel back in time and reverse? It’s too complicated, Q. too many choices. Too many confluences. Too many hasty decisions. There’s no way to pinpoint something and say – here’s where it began to go wrong.”

“There is.”

There was little flamboyance in that declaration. Q wasn’t laughing anymore.

“There is, and you were there…to see the end of that phase, at any rate.”

“What do you-“

“Puppeteer parasites! Come on, Jean Luc, I know you’ve seen a lot of stuff since, but you’d think the entire freaking Fleet command being taken over is sorta worth remembering, right?”

Picard’s eyes widened. One of their earliest missions…The conspiracy…

“That was-“

“Oh, you managed to unmask it so spectacularly, you and our dear Riker, but it didn’t end in the unmasking, did it? There was a looooot of house cleaning to be done…And not all of it was done as thoroughly as should be.”

Picard nodded. Yes… that had been one of the greatest disasters to strike the fleet.

“You know how that ended – you two killed the chief parasite, all the rest dropped dead.”

“And with them, their hosts.”

“And as the parasites, way smarter than you lot, had taken care to get hold of the fleet’s highest echelons…:”

Q counted off on his fingers

“The best of Starfleet was killed off, and the entire fleet and infrastructure was all out of whack, and your neat little Federation was thrown into who knows how much confusion and paranoia over the fact that they had been taken over by aliens…”

“And the Cardassian war. They were openly sabotaging our war efforts…sending captains and crews to their deaths almost randomly. It was not just a way to get troublesome captains out of the way, it completely ruined our strategy… I was not involved at the point, but the Command had to basically start from scratch. We couldn’t trust a single plan the parasite affected Command was working on. The Fleet was in chaos, the Federation vulnerable. A war that should have been child’s play dragged on, draining away resources and lives.”

“You forgot section 31.”

“I know they gained power! They were always present, a shadow, but they had always been..kept under strict watch. Only, with such a massive infiltration in the recent past, the Federation Council was desperate enough to pretty much give them a free reign – as long as they could ensure nothing like this could ever happen again. So many policy changes. Genetic augmentation declared a crime, suspected augments hunted, deep cover agents sent in to manipulate Klingon and Romulan politics…Assassinations..”

Picard shook his head somewhat numbly.

“Paranoia. Maybe understandable, given what happened, but paranoia was something the Federation could never have afforded, especially not at that point. We were scared. Panicked. And we ran right into the trap.”

Q nodded. His manner had sobered a little.

“And don’t forget the restaffing problem. Not only did all the smart admirals get ashed, they also had gotten most of the really smart captains ashed as well, so that they wouldn’t blow the whole plan out of the water…like you did, though a bit too late in the game.” 

Picard remembered that only too well. A rapid flurry of promotions. Underqualified and at times downright unqualified admirals who were chosen for the simple reason that there just weren’t any better choices. And these people – who may have been fine captains, but far from ready for an Admiral’s stripes – found themselves responsible for bringing order into the chaos the parasites had flung the federation into. A task they were far from capable of tackling. But they had had little choice, and did the best they could – a best that was nowhere near enough.

“The Cardassian peace treaty” Picard muttered. “It was only one of the disastrous decisions. The new Command was desperate to get the war over by any means possible, just so that they could have some breathing room to pull the Fleet back together. It was acknowledged by almost everyone that the treaty, as it stood, was disastrous. Weak. we yielded far too much. Worse, we yielded what wasn’t ours to give, as the Bajorans later pointed out… But it was all they could do, at that point. The war had become a quagmire.”

“And just when you lot were beginning to pull yourselves into some sort of order, along came Wolf…” 

“Domino effect.” Picard sighed. “Things went from bad to worse. Till the final straw – Romulus – came and proved, once and for all, just how far we had fallen… “

He looked up.

“And you are claiming this can be..undone. all of it. the infiltration. The catastrophes that followed.”

Q shrugged.

“Well, that’d be your job, Jean-Luc.”

“Mine?”

“Well, not just yours, of course. No offense, Jean-Luc, but this thing’s way too big for any one captain or crew to tackle. Let’s just say we’re...recruiting.”

“Recruiting who-“

“Oh, you’ll see!” Q threw up his hands in childish delight. “Oh, this is gonna be such fun!”

“Wait a second, let me get this straight – you’re taking us back in time, to catch the conspiracy before it got too strong a hold?”

“Nah, taking you to stop the infiltration before it begins! Gotta get to them before they’re all warmed up!”

“The parasites?”

Q scoffed.

“No, Jean-Luc! Their masters! The Xeleth Nivar!”

“Xeleth-“

“That’s what they call themselves, I prefer to call them A-Royal- Freaking-Pain-In-The-Ass. They sort of want the whole galaxy, and decided to do some spring cleaning on the pests hanging around.”

“Targeting the Federation-“

“They’ll get around to the Klingons, probably had a bit to do with that whole Romulan Supernova thing speeding up the way it did, but you guys were on the top of the hitlist. Nice to be wanted, huh?”

Q grinned again.

“Now, shall we step out, dearest?”

“Q..”

“Okay, okay, I’ll be professional!”

Q whirled, changing into the uniform of a starfleet captain. Picard glared at him.

“Don’t like it?”

He whirled once more, now taking on a typical tour guide costume.

“Off we go, sir!”

Picard supposed he should have hesitated. Should have thought it over. After all, he had had enough encounters with this omnipotent lunatic…. But still, what he offered… Too tempting. He stepped forward.

“Fine.”

The world whirled and vanished. When it reappeared again, he was in the promenade of a space station. One that a second glance allowed him to identify as Deep Space Nine. Captain Sisko’s command.

The first thing he noticed - he was no longer in the synth body. Nor in the disease ridden nonagenarian body that had been his. He was human. He was young – well, not exactly young, but the age he had been when he first encountered Q. When he had commanded the Enterprise.

The second thing he noticed – he had company. Ten people stood on the otherwise empty promenade.

“Captain?”

Riker stood at his side, looking bemused. Not the Riker he had left behind. His First Officer – young and looking younger with that easy cheerfulness which years and grief had drained from him. He was still wearing the old uniform, with Commander’s stripes, the old combadge.

Of the others, he recognized Sisko, and the young Bajoran who stood beside him – Major…Major, Kira, was it not?

The others…Janeway – the one whose ship had been lost in the Delta Quadrant. Seven’s captain. Was that her, the middle aged woman who stood with a Native American man beside her…Was he her first officer? Riker’s and Kira’s presence seemed to support that assumption.

A young man in his early thirties, with sandy blond hair and hazel eyes, a young Vulcan at his side, their uniforms the bright primary colors of a different era... Picard’s eyes narrowed in concentration as he traced two well remembered faces there – younger, of course, decades younger, and with few if any of the invisible scars that marked their future selves he had known, but still, recognizable.

Another man, whose face seemed somehow familiar…familiar from old holovids, perhaps, wearing the historical, first Fleet’s uniform… And another Vulcan next to him, this one a woman – one not wearing any recognizable Starfleet uniform.

For a moment, none of them moved, everyone clearly baffled, trained eyes taking in every detail of the scene, analyzing, evaluating. A sudden clap broke the silence, and Q materialized in the midst of the startled group.

“Here we are! Nice to see you, gentlemen, nice to see you, ladies, hope you all enjoy the tour!”


	2. Introductions

Sisko was the first to regain his voice.

“I thought I’d told you to stay the hell away from my station!”

Q put on a pouting expression.

“Ooh, Ben! That’s so rude. What would your mommy say?”

Kira stepped forward, but Sisko grabbed her arm in a ‘Not yet’ gesture. Janeway rolled her eyes.

“I really hope this isn’t your idea of a date…”

Riker looked from Q to Picard to the others and back again.

“And I’d been having such a nice day” the first officer groaned. “What’s he up to now?”

Kirk frowned.

“Um, I take it that every one else is familiar with this guy?”

“Not me” Archer declared. “And what the hell’s this place? How did we get here?”

Sisko and Kira had their phasers in hand by now. Not that it would do a whole lot of good against Q, but still… None of the others were armed, but it was clear they were wishing they were.

“I think some explanations are in order” T’Pol said. Her eyes lingered on Spock, and the Starfleet insignia they all wore.

“Where’re the others?” Sisko demanded, his glare fixed on the grinning Q.

If he had recognized Picard or Kirk, he showed no sign of it. First deal with the manchild demigod who has apparently caused his entire Station crew to vanish. Autographs or recriminations can be handled later.

“The others?” Q’s expression changed to wide eyed innocence.

“The rest of my crew.” Sisko snarled. “Those who were aboard my station. Where did you send them? What did you do to them? There were-”

“Oh, calm down!”

“Calm?” Kira looked like she was about to start blasting him, just on principles.

“And my ship!” Archer snapped. “Where is it?”

“Why did you bring us here? Who are you?” Kirk demanded. “What do you-“

“We don’t have time for your games” Janeway declared. “We’ve already got enough of a mess on our hands.”

“Are we in the Alpha Quadrant?” Chakotay asked, his gaze taking in the contours of the space station. “Did we…get home?” 

Q grinned, standing in their midst with his arms folded, letting the flurry of questions wash over him.

“Excuse me, class, one question at a time. Silence, please!”

It took a couple of moments, but finally they quieted down. There was nothing to be done but wait for explanations. Even Kirk and Archer, who had never encountered this particular maniac before, recognized the type.

“Okay, that’s soooo much better.” Q winked at a glowering Sisko and Kira. “See what good manners can do?”

“Get on with it, Q” Picard snapped.

Q curtsied.

“Your wish is my command, dear Jean-Luc!” then, turning to curtsey to Janeway. “Second only to yours, of course, Kathy!”

Janeway’s fingers went to where her phaser would have been had she been wearing one. Q cleared his throat theatrically.

“Ahem! Introductions first. Ladies, Gentlemen, you stand in the presence of the mighty Q. Q, the Mighty, Q, the Magnificent, Q the-“

“Interstellar nuisance” Riker interjected. Q scowled at him.

“Now, commander, it’s bad manners to interrupt! Um, so, where was I?”

“Q the magnificent” Kirk answered dryly. This guy was reminding him way too much of Trelane.

“Oh, yes, thanks!” Q paused a moment to reconnect the thread, then launched again “Q, the Omnipotent, Q the-“

He stopped, as if listening to something only he could hear.

“Okay, okay, I’ll get to the point!” He turned to the Starfleet officers and shrugged. “Those guys really have no sense of fun.”

He sighed, then clapped his hands once in a ‘let’s-get-down-to-business’ manner.

“Okay. First of all, your crews are perfectly safe. You can join them soon as this little orientation is over” He snapped his fingers, and the roof of the station turned transparent, revealing four starships in orbit. “And your lot too, Ben.”

“It’s Captain Sisko, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, but I would mind! I so hate getting formal. Jean-Luc knows that, don’t you, Jean?”

Picard resisted the urge to facepalm.

“They’ll turn up in time, don’t worry. I haven’t taken everyone from the station of course, there won’t be room for them all, not with four new crews, but I’ve got most of your guys. Wasn’t sure whether to take the tailor, but then again, I could use some entertainment.”

“Wouldn’t have minded if you had left him behind” Kira muttered “Or left him in a blackhole, for that matter.”

Q grinned.

“Maybe later, lovely Major. Just thought we had better have the first meeting with the Command teams. You know, to prevent confusion. And as for where you are…”

“Deep Space Nine” Janeway said. “I remember it well enough. Alpha Quadrant.”

There was a flash of hope in her eyes. Q noticed and sighed.

“Oh…. So sorry to disappoint you, dear Kathy. But only half right, I’m afraid. It’s Deep Space Nine, of course, was pretty convenient, but we sort of took it for a ride. It’s Delta Quadrant.”

“You dumped us in Delta Quadrant?”

Q wagged an admonishing finger at the indignant Sisko.

“Ben, Ben, all this excitement is really not good for your blood pressure, you know.”

“ _You_ are really not good for my blood pressure. Or for my sanity, for that matter.”

Q shrugged nonchalently.

“Then I think I’ll let Jean-Luc do the honors.”

Picard felt every eye on him. Damn Q.

“Captain, do you-“

“Yes, Wi-, I mean, Number One.”

This version of Riker would be likely to suspect an impersonation if he addressed him by his first name. Picard steeled himself and stepped into the middle of the bemused group.

“I am Captain Jean-Luc Picard, of the Federation Flagship USS Enterprise.” Kirk and Archer started slightly at that. Picard continued. “ I am from the year 2401” Riker’s eyes widened as he turned to take a second look at his captain. “But the best I can tell, I’m in the body I had in 2360s, which is the time I assume Commander Riker, my erstwhile First Officer, is from.”

He glanced at Riker, who nodded, still baffled.

There wasn’t as much disbelief as may have been expected – all of them, even Archer, were Starfleet officers. Weird is part of the job. And of course, all of them had had encounters with questionably sane reality warpers, not to mention time travel.

“I am Captain Kirk, also of the USS Enterprise” Kirk said, stepping slightly forward. “This is my first officer, Commander Spock. We are from the year 2269.”

Archer opened his mouth as if to say something, but seemed to think better of it.

“I know. I’ve…met you before.”

Picard hesitated there. Future knowledge was…dangerous to have, to say the least. But there was hardly an option of preventing contamination…

Q seemed to have read his mind.

“Oh, you needn’t worry about contaminating the time field and all that stuff, Jean-Luc. If this goes according to plan, you guys won’t remember a thing, anyway, when you get back to your own time. Say all the nasty, pretty details you want.”

Spock raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“And in case it does not go according to plan?”

Q echoed the raised eyebrow.

“Oh, then you’ll all be dead, so no need to worry.”

Picard resumed the explanation before anyone could respond to that comment.

“ Uh, in any case, this…gentleman, and I use the term in a very loose sense, is a member of a species named the Q Continuum. As you have seen, he is a reality warper, with considerable influence over time and space. He has brought us together to, quite literally, save the Federation – and the rest of the galaxy.”

It took a while to explain. After all, there was a great deal to explain, especially to the four from the past.

Kirk and Spock seemed to have an easier time grasping it – after all, they had been part of the Federation, and had seen it, if not quite at its whole strength, rapidly reaching that point. Archer, however, was listening with the wide eyed look of a medieval man being shown a computer. His Vulcan first officer naturally had better control over her expressions, but it was clear that she found this recital even more baffling than the optimistic human did.

Finally, Picard got to the part about the infiltration. The wounds that had never closed. Riker had known part of it, of course, but he paled as his captain detailed the long term consequences.

Despite Q’s assurances that there was little risk of timestream contamination, Picard was tempted to skip over the parts directly involving some of his audience. After all, it would be perfectly in character for Q to lie through his teeth if it meant a more entertaining show. However, he finally decided against it. there would be too many gaps – after all, there was no way to explain the events surrounding Romulus’ destruction without mentioning Ambassador Spock and his death, no way to explain the resolution of the synth issue without mentioning Soji…

If he skipped those parts, there would be too many loose threads. The others already had enough reason to be suspicious. No sense in adding fuel to the fire.

“The Cardassian wars” Kira breathed. “They interfered in the wars, kept the Federation from destroying those devils-“

“We wouldn’t have destroyed the Cardassians, in any case, Major” Picard pointed out gently. “That’s..not how it works. However, we could have ended the war far earlier. Could have gained far more concessions, insisted on greater reparations. Better justice for the Bajorans.”

“And we wouldn’t have been asked to cede our lands” Chakotay interjected.

Picard frowned, then recollected the details of the Voyager crew. Of course. The man was one of the Maquiz rebels. The captain of the destroyed ship Janeway had to merge her crew with… Now he stood side by side with his captain, but they had once been enemies. Rebels making up at least half of the Voyager’s crew. Naturally. It looked like Major Kira was not the only one who had personal grievances to bring against the Xeleth Nivar.

“Possibly”

Several of the policy makers had felt that the peace treaty had taken far too much from the Federation’s side. And of course the Maquiz had been far from willing to give in and go quietly, complicating an already complicated matter.

“And Seven…and Icheb…” Janeway couldn’t suppress a shudder at her protégée’s dark future. “All that…Just because they..”

”So” Archer said in a deceptively soft tone “these bastards gutted the Federation. And now – in your now – it’s dying.”

Picard nodded grimly.

“The Xeleth Nivar” Spock echoed thoughtfully. “Such a name is mentioned in Pre-Surakian mythology, referring to demons who were cast out of the universe in the ancient past. When the world was young.”

“They weren’t cast out” Q corrected. “They took off on their own, decided the galaxy was too small for them. Wandered around a long while, decided to come back home and found a lot of pest infestations had settled in while they were gone. And now they’re doing house cleaning. Right now, they’re busy here in the Delta Quadrant – this was their homeground, you know. But soon – soon in their reckoning – they’ll move on to bigger and better things. Like your pretty Federation. Jean-Luc here explained how that will end.”

“Unless we stop them, here and now” Kirk said.

His first officer seemed considerably less enthusiastic.

“Pardon, Mr Q, but we have found that timelines tend to maintain a certain balance. If we are to alter the past-“

“It can’t get any worse!” Picard snapped, whirling on him. “There is no way to make it worse than it is. Any interference can only lead to an improvement!”

Riker looked taken aback at this sudden outburst from his cool, cerebral captain, but the young Vulcan was, of course, not intimidated

. “We have faced attempts to alter history-“

“Attempts? How can you be sure they were only attempts, Ambassador..” he corrected himself hastily “ I mean, Commander? Would you realize it, if the past were changed, for better or for worse?”

Spock seemed to concede the argument. At any rate, he didn’t reply. Q grinned.

“Nice going, Jean-Luc! You out logicked a Vulcan! “

“Mr Q-“

“Commander, you needn’t worry! It’s like Jean here said. Things can’t get any worse.”

“Are we now in Xeleth Nivar territory?” Chakotay asked.

Q nodded.

“Don’t worry, they won’t be seeing you…for a while. We’ve put a cloak around the station. Of course, they’ll see through it soon enough, but you’ve got a month or so to figure out something longterm. And it’s not really Xeleth Nivar territory at the moment, officially, the way you lot define territory. They’ve been gone a good long while, you see. Plenty other people claiming the territory, so Nivars got a lot of pest control to do.”

“Genocide, you mean” Picard stated bluntly. Q frowned, then shrugged.

“Oh yeah, guess you could call it that.”

“Let me get this straight” Janeway said “ We’re to defeat the Xeleth Nivar in the twenty third century, to prevent the destruction of the Starfleet and the Federation in the twenty fourth, and early twenty fifth, centuries.”

“Defeat, kill, talk down, whatever you fancy. The thing is, right now, they can be handled. They’re just back from wherever they had been, they’re just cleaning their backyards, so to speak.”

“They’re vulnerable” Archer said.

Q raised both eyebrows in a clear gesture of disbelief.

“Vulnerable? Fractionally less undefeatable, that’s all, Archer boy.”

“How powerful are they?” T’Pol asked. “Are they reality warpers, like your kind? In that case-“

“Oh come on!” Q looked genuinely indignant. “You can’t expect me to give you all the details, where is the fun in that? You lot are Starfleet! You know, the whole, ‘Go Boldly Where No One Has Gone Before’, the whole deal! Go find out!”

The Vulcan woman raised an eyebrow, evidently wondering whether she had finally encountered a species more illogical and irritating than humans.

“I believe it would be more efficient if you were to provide us with more information than-“

“Oh, efficient is so boring!”

T’Pol started to say something, but before she could, Sisko stepped forward. His expression stated plainly that he had had enough of the riddles. Q took an unobtrusive step backwards, maneuvering so as to place Picard between him and Sisko. 

“Just one question, Q. Why are you doing this?”

Q frowned, pouting like a five-year-old told he couldn’t have ice cream for breakfast.

“I told you! A second chance!”

“Yes, but why? You’ve already demonstrated that you don’t think too much of the human race. Or the humanoid ones, for that matter. So why are you going to such extents to give us that chance? What is in it for you?”

“It can’t be easy, even for you, to juggle so many timestreams, to pull in all of us” Riker put in.

Sisko nodded. He had had enough experience of being a pawn for self proclaimed ‘higher beings’, and it definitely was not one he was inclined to repeat. Especially not for this clown.

“ Yeah. And it isn’t just you, doing it for a lark like you do everything else. It’s the Continuum. Why do you want it? What’s the Continuum’s role in this?”

Q threw up his hands.

“You lot are really annoying, you know. Too many questions. I’m off now, good luck, have fun!”

He curtsied deeply again to Janeway, blew a kiss at Picard, waved to the rest, stuck his tongue out at Sisko – and vanished, leaving the Starfleet officers staring, baffled, at each other.


	3. Chapter 3

Aboard all the ships present, the only thing everyone could agree upon was that whatever happened, it happened at around nineteen hundred hours, fifteen minutes.

Aboard Enterprise 1701, no one outside the Bridge realized what had happened, or that anything at all had happened. there was no sense of disorientation, no shaking as the gravitational stabilizers fought to compensate, not even a single flickering of lights. No one felt anything change, not even Scotty, who knew the ship’s vibrations better than his own heartbeat.

The engineer remained blissfully engrossed in the not-strictly-legal modifications he was wiring into the warp controls. Dr McCoy remained undisturbed in the sickbay, trying not to laugh at a certain ensign who had been… experimenting, and was currently engaged in concocting a very creative ‘explanation’ as to how he managed to get a mild phazer burn at a very sensitive part.

The Captain and First Officer were as usual at this hour, having one of their regular sparring matches/training sessions in the gymnasium. Jim was ruefully picking himself up off the floor, trying to not look too embarrassed (after all, he had explicitly ordered Spock not to hold back – he was training with a Vulcan so as to get a feel on how to tackle opponents of superior strength and speed) when the commlink sounded.

“ Bridge to Captain Kirk!”

That got everyone’s attention. Lt M’Ress’ purry voice was as calm and level as could be desired, but whatever had warranted disturbing the captain during his offduty hours – especially right now, when he was unlikely to be in the best humor – was something that could lead to a Red Alert called the next moment.

“Saved by the bell” Kirk muttered to himself, running lightly over to the nearest intercom. “Captain Kirk here.”

The young captain was aware everyone present would be unobtrusively keeping an eye and ear on him, but even then, he was not able to keep a tinge of shock from his face and tone. He listened intently for a few moments, then turned to Spock, his face grim.

“Come on.”

The Vulcan’s sharper ears would have caught whatever was said on the other side of the commlink even at the few paces’ distance he had kept, but of course, his expression offered no clue as to what was going on, or how serious. Both left at a not-quite-running pace, hastily pulling on their uniforms over the gym clothes.

Nearly everyone present had noticed the intercom call and their departure, and instantly launched into speculations as to the cause. So it was clear that they had left the gymnasium, apparently heading to the Bridge. But neither got there.

“They can’t have just vanished!” McCoy exclaimed.

“It looks like they did, Doc” Scotty commented somewhat absently, his attention fixed on the viewscreen before him.

The utterly unfamiliar expanse of stars was interesting enough on its own – as Tara Baudelaire at the Central Computer Console was evidently finding it – but what held the engineer’s attention was the strange contours of the space station they were orbiting. And the three starships sharing orbit with them.

“I’ve never seen a thing like that outside a museum” Garrovick, part of the security detail summoned to the Bridge, muttered.

The kid was right in one case, Scotty supposed. That one – Enterprise NX-01 – was actually pre Federation. Earth’s first Warp 5 ship. He recognized her, and the captain would have, as well, had he been aboard. The others, though…They looked like they had flown right out of an engineer’s dream. Futuristic. And there was already one ship that looked like it was from the past… The chief engineer really didn’t like what this was adding up to.

“I can’t hail them” Uhura said, fingers dancing rapidly across her console, but to no avail. “Communications are down. Intra ship its fine, but nothing beyond.”

“There’s a Klingon aboard one of them… No, two” Tara Baudelaire said from Spock’s usual station. “In the 1701 – D and that other one – Voyager. The Voyager readings are a bit weird, but it’s closer to Klingon than anything else”

She frowned.

“There are other, stranger readings… More than one unknown species. But the majority aboard are terrans. And in the NX-01, there are only terrans. Some lower animals, of course, but only evident sapient species is terran there.”

“Is that the only single species ship?”

Tara nodded. The general rule of thumb was that species diversity aboard was a good sign. If they can get along with each other, chances are pretty good they can get along with you, too. Unless, of course, the reason for species diversity happens to be slavery or culinary.

……………………………………………

Aboard the ship known as Enterprise 1701-D, apart from the Bridge crew, Guinan was the only one who felt the change when it came.

Her dark skin ensured that no sudden pallor betrayed her, but the slight shudder that went through her frame and spilt almost half of Will Riker’s drink onto the counter couldn’t be hidden. Riker paused amid what Wesley called his Romeo routine (this time with a feisty looking Andorian lieutenant who was matching him quip for quip).

“Guinan? Are you okay?”

Guinan nodded automatically.

“Yes, of course.”

Romeo routine or not, not much slipped past the young first officer – especially not a lie so evident that even Data could have detected it. He opened his mouth to say something (he wouldn’t ask her outright again, like Picard may have, but he would have gotten the answer out, in time) but his combadge let out its slight beep. Riker frowned – he had just come off duty – but tapped it. Wesley.

“Bridge to Commander Riker’

The kid’s voice was practically trembling with excitement – and fear, yes, more than a trace of fear there, and that was what got Riker out of his seat and halfway to the door before the next sentence came over the comm. Guinan, standing statue-still behind the barcounter, watched him exit. No one saw him emerge on the other side.

“They can’t be gone!” Dr Crusher exclaimed, unaware that the same words came from the mouth of her counterpart aboard another of the orbiting vessels – a counterpart who was separated from her by a century or more. 

“But they are gone,” Data’s golden eyes were intent on the figures and words flashing across the screen before him. “The computer cannot detect the captain’s or commander Riker’s combadges anywhere aboard.”

“They’re down there” Worf growled from his station at the phaser banks. He’s evidently itching to pull the trigger, but even the Klingon warrior knows that the order to do so is the unlikeliest to come from his current commanding officer.

Deanna Troi sat with her eyes closed, attempting to reach out across the gulf of space separating them from the station beneath – and their companion vessels.

“We’re in the Delta quadrant” Wesley Crusher, acting ensign, said for the fourth time since he had sent that near-panic call to Riker.

Since then things had only gotten weirder and weirder – first the Captain and the First Officer – both of whom who answered the calls and promised to be on the bridge ASAP- vanishes without a trace, then Data had recognized two of the ships sharing their orbit to be from the past – from two different centuries…

“The other one?” he asked, trying to keep form sounding too much like a kid – a terrified kid.

There was something fundamentally wrong about this. Even the inexperienced acting ensign could feel it. something had changed. Changed so abruptly that they had gone from there to here in a microsecond. Had Data been on the Bridge at the time of transfer, he would undoubtedly have been able to pinpoint the exact moment. But it had happened too fast for human eyes to mark down.

“Is it from the future? The small ship?”

…………………………………………

Janeway had been attending to the riskiest of her daily duties – calling on Neelix in his improvised (and if truth be told, sorta impressive) kitchen – when she vanished.

Neelix, who had turned away to get one of his latest delicacies out of the oven, turned back to find himself alone. The earnest Talaxian had gotten used to his shipmates mysteriously and rapidly vanishing whenever offered the chance to sample one of his new recipes, so he had simply shrugged and put the dish back in the oven to keep warm.

Chakotay’s disappearance had been slightly more spectacular.

“Kes’ training is proceeding in a perfectly satisfactory manner, Commander” Tuvok assured the human before him, not quite sure why the first officer felt it necessary to gain oral confirmation despite the detailed and perfectly clear report he had submitted. However, his years with the Fleet (and if truth be told, parenting experience to three cat-curious Vulcan children) had taught him to put up with unnecessary and illogical lines of questioning. “She displays considerable aptitude for control, something unusual in an overtly emotional species.”

Chakotay had been about to pass a comment on the time the very controlled Kes had literally lit Tuvok on fire, but he didn’t get past the first syllable. Tuvok turned around in time to see the human freeze mid-syllable, eyes widening in shock or terror. And then he was gone.

A human would have questioned his senses, rubbed his eyes, tried to blink away the hallucination. Or looked around for some confirmation that would say, yes, that did just happen. Tuvok, Vulcan to the core despite his somewhat unorthodox career preferences, (not to mention a Starfleet officer currently stuck in the Delta Quadrant), simply touched his combadge to report the first officer missing and to put the ship on Red Alert.

He didn’t get past the first word when an unprofessionally excited Tom Parris babbled that they had somehow reached Deep Space Nine – and, a second later, in a far more alarmed tone, that they seem to be still in the Delta Quadrant, but the chronometers are “going crazy.”

………………………………

Trip Tucker groaned as the intercom beeped.

“T’Pol! Get to the Bridge, now!” Jonathan Archer’s voice blared through the cabin.

“We’re busy!” Trip growled, though taking care to keep his voice beneath the pickup range.

Considering the point he was at at the moment, Trip would have preferred to continue even if a warp core breach was imminent, but T’Pol was out of the bed and into her clothes in one single fluid movement. Blast it. this kind of thing was likely to give a man a complex.

“The captain would not disturb us here were it not an emergency” T’Pol commented absently as she adjusted her hair back into its usual immaculate style.

“I’m having an emergency right here!”

But T’pol was already out of the door, no trace remaining upon her face or form to indicate what she had been busy with. Trip groaned, then reluctantly pulled himself out of bed. If whatever happened got Archer freaked out enough to yell for his science officer in the middle of night, the odds are he’d very soon need his chief engineer as well.

“This is going to be one of these days” he muttered in the midst of passing some choice comments upon his captain’s parentage and sanity. When he was summoned to the Bridge a few moments later by a near-panic Hoshi to be told that not only did T’Pol never reach the Bridge, but Archer vanished mid-sentence as he was yelling at someone to figure out what exactly had happened and what screwed up the chronometers, he was to appreciate just how right that sentiment was.

“They’ve got something to do with this.”Malcolm Reed declared, his eyes on the strange ships surrounding them.

“I can’t get through” Hoshi confessed.

Reed’s eyes narrowed, and Trip knew he was calculating their chances should the confrontation turn into a shootout, or should they have to go to the rescue of their captain and T’Pol. It didn’t need the armory officer’s expertise to realize that they were so thoroughly outarmed and outarmored as to make the very idea of confrontation laughable. Even at max power to the shields, one of those bigger ships…


	4. Chapter 4

“Wait a second” Archer held up a hand for silence “Just how can we be sure you are telling the truth? About this dark future or whatever…We have only your word – and that lunatic’s word – to take for it.”

Picard nodded. He had expected disbelief – they were all well used to the sort of madness deep space can throw at you, but they were also well used to the deceptions out there.

“I am willing to submit to a computer based interrogation. Or, there are Vulcans present in four of the five crews here– I am willing to submit to a mindmeld from any of them.”

He wasn’t quite sure whether the mindmeld taboo was in effect during the era Archer and his first officer came from. Archer’s expression suggested it most definitely was. Before anyone could answer, an interruption came in the form of the station’s newly restored security forces.

“Everyone freeze!” Odo shouted as he emerged from his office, followed by a couple of his baffled looking deputies. The changeling constable was no less puzzled, but naturally his face showed no sign of that.

“It’s okay, Odo” Sisko said “At least, I think it is. For now.”

“It’s most definitely not okay” Archer muttered under his breath.

The constable’s eyes went over each stranger, assessing their threat level, lingering longest over Chakotay. Everyone’s communicators and combadges began beeping at once, as the shield Q had thrown over the station dissipated. Odo lowered his phaser, but his posture giving no doubt that he’ll be able to bring it up and shooting at a second’s notice. 

“We’re…alright” Kirk said into his communicator. “And no, they aren’t hostiles.”

“Beam us up” Janeway said to Tuvok“I’ll explain aboard. At least, try to.” She looked at the others “Meet here again in…one hour’s time?”

“Fine by me,” Kirk said. The others nodded.

Archer stared as several before him vanished in pillars of golden light.

“Transporter” T’Pol answered the unspoken question. “Naturally, the technology has seen considerable improvement over the years.”

“You are Jonathan Archer?”

Sisko’s tone held clear respect, though he genuinely couldn’t see any indication of the legendary founder of the Federation in the brusque disheveled man standing before him.

“I thought we already got that clear. You got some place for shuttles to land?”

“Of course.” Kira frowned. “I thought terran transporter technology was around since before the time warp travel began.”

“It is not safe for the transport of sapient organisms” T’Pol answered.

“Or any organic material, period” Archer stated, then, into the communicator, “Yeah, send Travis with a shuttle.” Hurry up, this place is giving me the creeps.

Now that Q was gone, taking the communications blockage with him, messages were flying back and forth across the ships and the station even before the kidnapped command teams materialized back aboard.

“All department heads to briefing room one. Now.” Kirk ordered trying to dodge McCoy’s scanner and barrage of questions. “I’ll explain, Bones. Now get that out of my face.”

……………………………………

The other captains, baffled as they no doubt were, at least had the advantage of materializing back aboard their familiar ships – their homegrounds. Picard took a deep breath as a transporter room he hadn’t seen in decades materialized around him.

“Captain? Will? Are you okay?”

Beverly looked impossibly young. And beautiful. Everything aboard was beautiful, he realized. Everything bright, colorful. Good. Right in a way nothing had been for so very long.

“Captain?”

Whatever Beverly saw in his face, it was alarming the doctor.

“I am fine. Perfectly fine.”

Riker and Beverly looked far from convinced, though Riker must have been able to guess at least part of what he was feeling. A good world. A world where you could hold onto ideals. A world where you could dream and roam. This is what they took from us. From all of us. Wesley. Was he still aboard? Which year was this?

……………………………………..

“Time travel?” Trip stared at Archer as the captain finished recounting exactly what had gone down on the space station. “We…are in the future?”

“Sort of.”

Most of the gathered officers were surreptitiously glancing at T’Pol for confirmation.

“I thought your guys had decided it was impossible?”

The science officer sighed.

“Such was the theory. However, considering the present situation, I can conceive of no other explanation.”

“Unless it’s, you know, a collective hallucination or something” Phlox suggested.

“That is the sanest thing I’ve heard today” Archer agreed. “But no, I don’t think that is it now. Unfortunately.”

“So they did manage to form a Federation?”

Mayweather looked more than a little doubtful. No wonder, considering the situation they had just left in their time. Archer grinned.

“Yep. And I became its president.”

“That settles it” Malcolm declared. “This is a collective hallucination. Or I am having a hallucination.”

“Or they got the wrong Archer” Trip suggested. “I mean, it’s quite a few centuries away, and Archer’s hardly a rare name.”

Or maybe someone or something possessed Archer in the future, managing to inject some common sense and tact. Not to mention actual diplomacy.

……………………………

“The O’Briens are missing” Worf reported.

“All three? Even Molly?” Riker frowned. “What could Q want with them? Any one else?”

“None” Data confirmed.

Picard’s eyes were fixed on the android officer. Good to see you again, Data. Don’t change. Don’t ever change. And this time don’t you dare get yourself killed, because I’m not going to watch that happen again. Not on my watch. And not for me. Ever again.

“I think the O’Briens are safe enough, Number One.”

It was easy – slightly alarmingly so – to fall back into the old patterns of speech, old modes of address. He felt Troi’s eyes – and to a lesser extent her mind – on him. What was she seeing? Not the Picard who had vanished before her eyes less than hours ago, that was for certain. What did she think of him, now? What would she say if he were to ask her – not here, of course, but in private? What would she confide to Riker, or to Beverly?

“Captain?” Riker prompted.

Picard realized he had allowed his mind to wander for a moment. This won’t do. they already had enough reason to doubt his sanity.

“The O’Briens are safe enough” he repeated. “Chief O’Brien transferred to Deep Space Nine as its chief engineer, and his family travelled with him.”

“In the future.”

“Yes. We can contact Captain Sisko and make sure, of course, but I believe it is so.”

……………………………….

“Worf’s gone” Jazdia Dax reported.

Those who remained aboard the station had gathered at Quark’s bar, partly because Sisko’s office wasn’t quite large enough to hold of them, partly because almost everyone needed a drink after what just happened.

“Q really doesn’t like him” Bashir pointed out, somewhat worried.

Garak chuckled.

“I thought our Captain here was the one who punched him in the face?”

“Q liked…for a certain definition of like… most of the Enterprise crew” Dax said, trying to recollect what Worf had told her about this particular nuisance. Not much- Worf wasn’t one for talking, even when stuck in the same room with Jazdia Dax. “Liked playing with them, at any rate. He won’t… At least I hope he won’t..”

“What I don’t get is why he took these two” Kira’s eyes went to a dejected looking Quark and a very baffled Rom.

“Entertainment value?” Garak suggested. “What’s a circus without clowns?”

Quark shot a glare at the Cardassian, but didn’t have the nerve to say anything. Jake and Nog were seated at the table next to the grownups, listening intently. Jake looked like he was taking notes. Nog just looked freaked out. Molly was engrossed in coloring, most of the discussion going straight over her head. It was a testimony to the regularity of irregularities in the station’s environment that the little girl was effortlessly taking the disappearance of most of the populace in her stride.

“Maybe he’s on the Enterprise” O’Brien suggested.”I mean, going by the way commander Riker looked, we’re supposed to be on the Enterprise he came from… Maybe Q just didn’t feel like bringing two sets.”

Sisko pinched the bridge of his nose, trying unsuccessfully to stave off a migraine. As if things weren’t complicated enough already! All they needed now was for those temporal affairs duo to show up. Something told him that they won’t be likely to take ‘Q made me do it’ as a valid explanation.

…………………………………………………..

“Changing the past” Tom Parris was trying not to show just how wrong footed this felt.

“We’ve done it before.” Janeway pointed out. “More than once, actually.”

“But this…change that has been proposed.. it is on a far larger scale than anything we have attempted.” Tuvok pointed out. “It will affect the entire galaxy.”

“It’ll save the entire galaxy!” Chakotay declared.

“If we can trust the information Captain picard – if he is Captain Picard – and Q provided.”

“You’ll be able to find out for sure, if you mindmeld with him” Janeway commented. “But I have to admit I believe him already.”

“A statement that does more credit to your character than to your judgement, if I may say so, Captain.”

“If we change it all…” Kes’ voice was even softer than usual “ If we change it all, if the Cardassian war ends easily and there’s no Maquis to fight…” She looked up towards her crewmates “ There..There would be no reason for you to be there for the caretaker…For you to end up in the Delta Quadrant..”

“To find us” Neelix, who had remained uncharacteristically silent till then, completed. “Or Seven.”

Chakotay, who had been practically glowing with excitement a moment ago, froze. He hadn’t paused to consider that complication. He and his people wouldn’t lose their homelands, wouldn’t be driven to rebellion and violence… Yes, but also Seven would live out her life in the Borg Collective. Neelix and Kes would perish in that lost world.

“Maybe we still will” Harry Kim tried to be optimistic. “ I mean, a lot of things can happen, right? We may be on a regular mission when the caretaker grabs us.. It may still work out!”

“And if the Federation is more powerful, if it gets to deal with the Borg in time…maybe they may never get to you, Seven!” Tom declared. “Maybe you could be Annika!”

Seven did not respond, but it was clear that the prospect of being someone she never really knew wasn’t exactly appealing. Even if the timelines worked out the way Tom thought, which she was pretty sure they didn’t.

……………………………………………….

“We need a fleet captain”

Janeway, stickler for protocol that she’s, was of course the one who first voiced the suggestion when the command teams met again. Sisko had opted to have this meeting in the official conference room, despite Jazdia’s suggestion that many present would far prefer Quark’s bar.

“Fleet captain?” Archer frowned. “We haven’t yet decided whether we are to be a fleet.”

“What else do you suggest, then? We’re all out of time and place. Unless Q decides to take us back on his own, we’re stuck.”

“Time travel is an option-“ Kirk began, but Sisko interrupted.

“Maybe we can get back to our proper eras – but we’ll still be in the Delta Quadrant, decades away from everything we are familiar with. “

Picard could barely believe his ears.

“Are you suggesting that we should try to just run back home? Give up our last chance? Give up the Federation’s last chance?”

He was on his feet, glaring down at the others – the ones who even now didn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation, didn’t grasp how everything, everything, depended upon them. upon them, now.

“Captain…” Riker was evidently finding this changed Picard unnerving.

“It is only logical to consider all options” Spock, who in the dark future would die a defeated old man in a space anomaly, hunted by one of a race he had tried so long and so futilely to save, said calmly.

He didn’t understand, Picard realized. No matter how smart he was, he didn’t. None of them really understood. He had explained everything the best he could, but they didn’t, couldn’t, understand. They hadn’t seen the world that awaited them beyond.

Even now, they were still thinking about options, other options, wondering whether it was possible to run away from this dazzling chance they had been given.

“We are not going to give up, Captain” Kirk said.

He looked so young. All of them looked so young. Even Sisko, who had been in the midst of the war, who had watched his wife die in his arms, and who no doubt believed he knew all about war and tragedy and loss, looked young, naïve.

“But the problem is, we just have this… Q’s word for it. I believe you when you describe the future. But we only have Q’s word that these Xeleth Nivar were responsible. I have always considered myself a good judge of character, and I know that we can trust you. but I also know we certainly can’t trust Q. He’s not telling the truth – at least, not the whole truth. I haven’t met him before, but I have met those like him. And whenever they are hiding something, accepting a favor from them is nothing short of suicidal.”

“We need to gather more information” T’Pol added.

“Don’t forget what Q said about the station” Kira said. “He claimed he had shielded the station – but only for a short while. They’ll see through it. they may already know about it.”

“He said we had about a month” Riker said. “And Q is crazy, but when he explicitly says something, that tends to be the truth. He’ll lie by omission, but rarely directly. If he said we have a month, we have a month.”

“If we’re still here by then” Archer added, but no one responded this time.

This quest was the toughest for him to accept. The others at least knew what they were fighting to save. They had seen the world they were supposed to defend. For Archer and his crew, the very idea of the Federation was still in the future, almost just a dream.

“We need time before we actually do anything” Chakotay said “ Not just to gather information, but to prepare ourselves. Two of the ships we have are of past eras. Out of date technology.”

Kirk frowned. This guy had better not call the Enterprise – their Enterprise – out of date within earshot of Scotty.

“If we’re to be faced with actually fighting these creatures, we’ll be needing a lot of upgrades. Not just the old ships. Ours too – the Voyager’s a beauty, but she’s taken a hell of a beating out there all alone.”

“And we’ll need to work on improving the station’s defenses.” Sisko said. “Out here, if they spot us, we’re going to be sitting ducks the way we are right now.”

Picard relaxed. The idea of escaping, running away to their own familiar worlds, had been brought into the open by Archer’s comment, but now, almost without discussion all of them were turning away from it. preparing to fight.

Maybe they did understand, after all.


End file.
